About Web Conferencing

Web Conferencing Topics

• What Is an Online Meeting
• Roles within a Conference
• DataXchange™ Features
• Viewing Who Is in the Conference
• Discussion Area

• Sharing Applications
• Mode Selection
• Uploading Images and Presentations to a Conference
• Whiteboard Annotations

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What Is an Online Meeting?

An online meeting allows computer users in different locations to work together as though they were sitting at the same computer, talking to each other and viewing and controlling the same programs.

Similarly to participating in a telephone conference call, where many people from different locations hold a meeting using the telephone, DataXchange allows you to set up a meeting via your computer, where participants have a much wider range of tools with which to communicate:

• Chat (sending text messages)
• Whiteboard (free-form text and drawings)
• Presentations (PowerPoint or JPEG images, which you can annotate as you discuss them)
• Shared applications (one user can share a program running on his or her computer, and other users can see it in operation; another user can even take control and work with the program as though it was running on his or her own computer).

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Roles within a Conference

There are two levels of user in DataXchange, attendees and presenters. They have different functionalities, as outlined below:

Attendees Can:

• Join and leave conferences
• Chat with other attendees and presenters
• View a list of names of all attendees
• See any shared applications
• Watch slide shows
• Watch as presenters create diagrams on the Whiteboard
• Watch as presenters annotate slides or shared applications

Presenters Can:

• Chair a conference
• Invite visitors to the conference
• Chat with other attendees and presenters
• Use the Whiteboard
• Give a slide presentation
• Share and manipulate a document or application
• End the conference

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DataXchange™ Features

DataXchange™ provides the following ways for people to communicate during a meeting:

Some users may not have access to all of these features, depending on their hardware setup.

Chat
Chat allows you to send text messages to other people in the meeting.

• When a client sends a message to everyone, it is received by all clients in the meeting.
• Clients can "whisper" a message - that is, send it to a particular client rather than to everyone in the meeting.

Whiteboard
The Whiteboard allows you to exchange free-form text and drawings with other people in the meeting. You can write text or draw images, and then other people can modify it or add to it.

Presentations
Browser-based clients can upload one or more images (a PowerPoint presentation or individual JPEG images) to the meeting to provide a basis for discussion. Other browser-based client users in the meeting can annotate these images by writing text or drawing images, in the same way as for the Whiteboard.

Shared applications
Shared applications mean that one DataXchange user can share a program running on his or her computer, and other users can see it in operation; another person can even take control and work with the program as though it were running on his or her own computer.

• On a Windows system, the browser-based client can share applications that can be controlled by any other type of client

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Viewing Who Is in the Conference

The pane at the bottom left of the screen shows a list of other users in the conference. For each user, the list shows the color in which their annotations to the Whiteboard appear; this provides a quick reference for distinguishing between annotations.

• The icon to the left of each user's name identifies the privileges that the user has. A circle denotes an attendee, while an arrow denotes a presenter. A dash by the arrow denotes the presenter who last took control of the conference.
• To view more details about a particular user, right-click on the user's name. This displays a menu with a number of options, depending on your privileges and those of the user in question.
• If you are an attendee, the menu for any other user will simply offer you a "User Status" entry. This produces a pop-up window detailing whether the user can control the conference; and whether the user is using a high bandwidth connection.
• If you are a presenter, you also have the following options.
  • If the user is an attendee, you can promote him to a presenter, or force him off the conference.
  • If the user is a presenter and not the conference owner, you can demote him to a attendee, or force him off the conference.
  • No presenter can demote or force off the conference owner.
  • No user can access any options on his own menu, save "User Status".

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Discussion Area

The window at the left of the screen, above the user list, contains a record of Chat messages that have been sent during the conference.

• Messages prefixed by DataXchange are sent automatically (for example to annotate the conference start time).
• Other messages are those that have been sent by users in the conference, and are prefixed by the name of the sender.

To send a Chat message, first select from the "To" box at the bottom of this window to indicate whether you want to send the message to all users or only to a specific user. Then type your message in the "Say" box at the bottom of this window and press Enter.

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Sharing Applications

Select the Share menu in the conferencing window to share applications from your desktop so that other users in the conference can see them. (This will only appear on Windows systems, not on UNIX or Mac systems).

You can then choose how to display the application(s) to share:

• Select with the pointer (by clicking on the application you want to share)
• Select from a list of running applications on your desktop
• Share all applications in a certain part of your screen (by using "click-and-drag" to indicate the area to be shared)
• Share the entire desktop.

When you have shared one or more applications, you can do the following (again via the Share menu):

• Permit or deny remote control of the shared applications by other users.
• Select whether you want to "overpaint obscured areas" of a shared application. Selecting this option means that, if the application is partly or completely obscured by other windows on your screen, the obscured areas of the application do not appear on the DataXchange desktop (they are shown as gray hatched areas instead). This ensures that other users do not see information in the application that you cannot see.
• Unshare an application (by selecting it from a list) so that other users can no longer see it.

Shared applications occupy the same area of the screen as any presentation images that have been uploaded to the conference and the whiteboard. To view shared applications, click on the Applications tab to switch into Application Sharing mode as described below.

If your server supports high quality application sharing, you can choose from the following two options:

• Use high speed hosting.
• Use high color hosting.

Selecting the high speed option sends screen data from your shared applications using low quality. This uses less bandwidth and is much faster than high color hosting. This option is recommended for users with modem speed connections.

Selecting the high color option sends screen data from your shared applications using high quality. This uses more bandwidth and is slower. This option is recommended for users with LAN speed connections.

If you are running a Netscape browser and it tells you that your security settings do not allow hosting, when you attempt to share an application, then one of the following has occurred:

• You replied "Deny" when one or more of the dialog boxes asking you to trust the downloaded applet appeared. The permissions that the applet requests are necessary to give you all the features.
  
  If this happened, simply restart the browser, and answer "Grant" to the questions when they are asked again. (To avoid being asked the same questions in future, check "Remember this decision".)
• If you answered "Deny" to the questions, but checked "Remember this decision", you will not be asked again. In this case, bring up the Netscape security settings (by clicking on the padlock at the bottom of the browser window). Click on the Java/Javascript setting, and locate the DataXchange entry in the list to the right of the window. If you are unsure which entry it is, select a probable one, and use "View Certificate" to check. Having found the correct one, use the "Remove" button to delete it - this will force the questions to be asked next time.

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Mode Selection

The right-hand window of DataXchange has three different modes, as can be selected by pressing one of the three mode buttons on the top-right hand side of the screen. The three modes the user can select are:

Whiteboard Mode
This is selected using the leftmost of the three buttons. In this mode, the right-hand window displays an initially blank white area in which users can communicate using drawings or text annotations using the annotation tools, as detailed in the Annotations section below.

You can also take a snapshot of the Whiteboard at any time, which is then stored as a new slide in the Slideshow Mode.

Application Sharing Mode
The central of the three mode buttons switches the desktop to Application Sharing Mode. In this mode, it is possible to view and control any applications that have been shared. On Windows systems, when no applications are shared in this mode, a splash screen is displayed with instructions on how to get started with the DataXchange client. No snapshots of the Slideshow window can be taken when the splash screen is displayed, and no annotations can be made on the splash screen. When an application is shared, the annotation features are enabled, and snapshots can be taken. The client will automatically switch to this mode when a new application is shared, or if the user clicks on the Take Control button while in either of the other two modes.

Slideshow Mode
You can navigate between slides in three ways.

• Use the Forward and Back buttons in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
• Use the buttons Page Down and Page Up for Forward and Back respectively.
• Select the Slide Thumbnail item in the View menu, to see thumbnail images of all slides, and then click on the slide you want to view.

Movement and deletion of existing slides in Slideshow Mode is done using the Slide Scroller brought up by selecting the Slide Thumbnail item in the View menu. To move a slide, click on the slide you wish to move and drag up or down as desired. The new location at which the slide will be inserted is indicated by an orange bar. To delete a slide, either navigate to the selected slide as detailed above, and select the delete current slide item in the Slide menu. Alternatively, select the desired slide for deletion using the Slide Scroller, and press the Delete button on your keyboard. In both cases, a warning popup will appear asking you to confirm that you wish to delete the current slide. If you confirm this action, all of the contents of the current slide will be removed, including the uploaded image in it if one is present.

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Uploading Images and Slideshows to a Conference

You can upload images to the conference (except on Mac OS clients, before MacOS X with IE 5.1), so that users in the conference can view and modify them. The images must be in one of the following formats:

• A PowerPoint presentation (a PPT or PPS file).
• One or more images in JPEG format. If you want to use multiple images, they must all be in the same directory; to force the order of the images you can end each filename with a number, they will appear in order of these numbers.

To upload the slideshow, select the Upload slides... item in the Slide menu. Then choose one of the following options:

• Select a single PowerPoint or JPEG file to add a PowerPoint presentation or a single JPEG file.
• Select the first JPEG in a numbered sequence to specify the name of a directory containing a set of JPEG files.

After you have uploaded the slideshow, each PowerPoint slide or each JPEG image appears as a separate page. You can annotate these images as described in Whiteboard Annotations below.

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Annotations

The buttons above the Whiteboard allow you to make annotations to the Whiteboard or to an uploaded image.

Click on the Whiteboard tab to make annotations.

You can use the following tools to make annotations:

At any time, and in any mode (except when no applications are shared in Application Sharing Mode) you can click on the Snapshot button to take a "snapshot" of the current annotated image. This is then added as a new page (after the existing pages), so that you can refer to it later or make further annotations. For example, you may want to take several snapshots throughout a discussion, so that you have a record of each stage of the discussion and not just of the final agreed position.

DataXchange is a trademark of Avaya, Inc.